R.H.I. Read online

  But the point, the whole point, was that people like her—who moved bricks—they should be the authority! And, on the other hand, they could not have authority; they only moved bricks; they could not raise themselves above their tasks. And, still, this woman did seem to raise herself above her task. The workers themselves required the direction of intellectuals, he thought, I wrote, to raise them above self-interest, according to comrade Lenin. What was the woman asking? She was in an impossible situation—that seemed clear enough—and it seemed impossible now for her to talk more. She put a hand on his arm. It was a surprising touch. He didn’t pull away. Why should he? There was some self-interest, of course, in her gesture, and in her incomplete request. Was there? Somehow she had created a situation in which words themselves could not be uttered: a wordlessness pregnant with impossible words. H felt it more deeply than her touch on his arm. He was not at all used to such situations. Weren’t words tools that one could always pick up, tools to put to use, tools with which—why not?—to build? He had such faith in words! And now, their absence. Something wild in this woman’s look—even as she stood still—swept words away, threw them off, destroyed them.

  She said, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to put you in an awkward position. I don’t know you.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘Could I use your name?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I know you don’t know me either.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘I probably won’t need to use it.’

  ‘I see.’

  Then: ‘But, will you remember me if I do? You won’t remember. How will you remember me? You must talk to so many people.’

  She was still touching him. It was comfortable enough, they way they stood together with her hand on his arm. ‘I’ll remember you. I’ll try.’

  Wer begeht Selbstmord? Wer tötet wen? What can we say about this ‘Anita R’? K had taken the name sometime after her meeting with the soldier. He had been infantry, she thought—though, also, her memories of the event were only schematic now: a series of outline images; wordless diagrams. At first she had thought: by killing himself he killed her. This mutual murder was something senseless, some pure act without reason. Anita had been a friend of hers, now almost certainly dead, thought K/Anita. Would she have minded K taking her name? K’s family were dead too; she had no one. The Kaltenbachs, especially: when she had gone back to the building (why?) there was no sign of the soldier, and no sign of the Kaltenbachs either. The apartment was empty, cleaned out. The clean apartment terrified her. What ‘status’ did the Kaltenbachs now have? What was K now responsible for? And in whose eyes?

  For a time—until the particularly harsh winter that followed the end of the war—she slept in the allotment shed that had belonged to the R family, Anita’s family. One of her comrades in the work group had told her that it was the infantry, especially, that you had to watch out for. The mechanised units were composed of disciplined WORKERS, and women had nothing to fear from them. The ASIATIC infantryman, the LUMPEN, what had the woman said? WHAT was the soldier who had killed himself/her?

  And, of course, she was still alive. She did not commit suicide, unlike many. The man’s act, had it been after all a wild, aggressive gesture, a rape in its own way? He had seemed to reverse the violence that men inflict on women—but it was, wasn’t it, nonetheless something he had done to her. She avoided company at first, where possible. Others were living in the sheds, and there was a good chance that they would have known Anita R, the original Anita R. She was not quite able to wear the name as a mask, not always. The city, then, had its dangers. What had become of the Kaltenbachs, their children? It was necessary to build walls: between this new Anita R and the old one; between this Anita R and the K that she had been. The walls would create a new form of honesty in her, one in which she was Anita R, and had never been K. The difficulty of remembering the EVENT would, in fact, prove useful; but at the same time it was necessary to think about it, to try to remember it, or to understand what it meant. No doubt this effort to remember was itself necessary so that she could forget. The effort to remember was itself a way to build a wall against the very memory. For example, she needed to forget the soldier, but she could not remember his face. There was no image of his face. She could not forget him without first remembering his face, and the expression on his face, an expression that might provide some kind of clue to what had happened, to what his act (her act?) had meant. A meaningless thing was impossible to forget, impossible to build around. It made every wall, every STRUCTURE OF THE MIND slippery and unstable. It threatened to make all meaning (structure) collapse. No structure could account for structurelessness. Her thoughts were moving back and forth from structure to structurelessness. With each cycle, with each approach of structurelessness (I wrote) a kind of hole opened up.

  Needless to say, K/Anita could not think all of this, in quite this way, herself. The act of clearing, of moving and sorting and stacking bricks was one of the ways in which she thought it. It was a situation that she grasped and made use of; she let the activity, the physical activity, the work of it—she let all that obliterate what she had been, as far as possible. This work also obliterated the past work. Here was an unintended effect of the command that women received: it reversed the other command, the previous command. The Nazis had ordered women to be Women: to become some image of Woman. Women were largely prohibited from taking paid work. Only towards the end of the war were women after all commanded to work: as, for example, domestic help. Those without homes (of the right sort) were ordered into homes. But this new command, it ordered them out again, it ordered women to take up tools. It disproved the Nazi woman-image.

  In between the Nazi command and the new command … it was the soldier who had made that home, the Kaltenbachs’ home, impossible, and forced her to run out into the ruined city. The soldier, his act of suicide, his structureless act—was it also a form of command? Like the other commands, it came, it seemed, from nowhere; it was ultimately impossible to understand. No doubt, she thought, some drama in him; some depression; even some ill-thought ethical idea of what should be done—some imbalance redressed. She couldn’t guess.

  Die Stadt ist keine Theaterkulisse. H returned to live in Berlin the same year as Brecht. Though they had not previously known each other well, there was something of a reunion about their meeting, which had, thought H, I wrote, something to do with the city and its opportunities. Brecht, as much as H, breathed the city’s rubble, and when they met up they recognised something in each other—a look, a sense of coming home, not to the war-torn Berlin that lay around them, but to a future and an active part in it. They embraced each other like old friends, or like war survivors.

  ‘But,’ said Brecht, ‘I invited you to join me because I’ve always taken a keen interest in architecture. As you know!’

  ‘Who can have anything but a keen interest now?’

  ‘Yes. Yes! Anyone who wants to be here. It’s different over there.’By which, H knew, Brecht meant America. But America now included part of Germany. ‘Coming here means something very important for me.’

  ‘You’ll have your own troupe and your own theatre.’

  ‘We’ll all have our own theatre. That’s why I’ve come back.’

  H laughed.

  ‘Oh yes I know, it’s exciting, the chance to direct my plays. America wasn’t a success for me. Don’t laugh!’ But Brecht himself laughed. ‘No, this city is a theatre the way nothing else can be. I wanted to talk to you because I want to help.’

  ‘Help?’

  Brecht said, ‘Yes, I want to help build it.’

  ‘Yes. Good.’

  ‘I don’t know what that means. Yes, I do: it means the city isn’t a backdrop to a play any more, the way it was for Mahagonny. A painted backdrop with actors acting out their lines in front of it! No, this is the city that the workers will build themselves.’

  ‘Of course,’ said H, ‘that is why I am here too.’
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  ‘Scharoun—is he good?’

  ‘I think so. Maybe he’s not quite—’

  ‘On our side?’

  ‘I owe my job here to him.’

  ‘The workers. I want to meet them. When building starts, take me to meet them. Well, not all of them. Obviously. I want to talk with them.’

  ‘When building starts—yes, of course.’

  ‘Returning here,’ said Brecht, ‘is so important for me. I have such ideas! Over there, over there my work could only ever be about warning, warning of the problems and the catastrophe that’s coming. Now it’s no catastrophe, the catastrophe has already happened. It’s still happening over there, in slow motion. Their cities are just as ruined as ours, even though no bomb has touched them.’ Then: ‘But the last thing you need is me telling you your job!’

  H said, ‘It’s exactly what I need. We get caught up in these problems—traffic flow, breaking down the city into autonomous cells …’

  ‘Oh that, a bad idea. Chopping up the city? Well, what do I know.’

  ‘It’s the principle we’re working on for Friedrichshain. An autonomous district.’

  ‘Oh well, good. Details, as you say. The important thing is the building. It’s one thing to endlessly criticise and warn—but that’s not the issue here. There’s nothing left to warn people about! Here, it’s not warning, it’s building. What I imagine is a building, a city, clothed in words. Why not? Poetry for the people, on their buildings. I may not be an architect or a builder, but I would like to see my poetry be part of the new city; I would like a city of words, a city whose meaning is written on its skin.’

  ‘It’s not going to be easy, any of it.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right. Brick by brick.’

  And there was the problem, H thought, I wrote: hefty, stubborn matter; immobile walls. If cities were like plays, I wrote, we would put them up for a week, take them down, erect another. What would cities and people learn from each other? How would they grow in conversation?

  Am Anfang taten wir nicht nur so. Anita R was waiting for him outside the building of the newly established Academy. He embraced her. ‘And you? What are you doing now?’

  ‘I heard you would be here.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  He laughed. ‘Well. Thank you. It could be grander.’ He meant the building, which was still mostly a shell, swathed now in scaffolding, with a few usable rooms and the constant sound of rebuilding.

  ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘the work will be able to start properly now.’

  ‘I’d happily have it knocked down …’

  ‘I was meaning the city.’ Then: ‘Now that—’

  ‘The situation is resolved.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked at her. Something about her tone seemed to question the situation, the resolution. It was, of course, a failure of resolution, the division of the country in two. He said quietly, ‘What do you think about it?’

  ‘Everyone knew it was coming. It’s nothing. I go past the new buildings in Friedrichshain sometimes.’

  ‘Oh.’ He said, ‘We’re no longer supposed to consider those buildings an appropriate expression of the new Germany.’

  She laughed and flashed a look across at him.

  ‘Don’t be cynical,’ he said.

  ‘No. It’s more complicated than you thought!’

  He said, ‘No. Yes. You knew. You kept telling me.’

  ‘Did I?’ She said, ‘I suppose it was an intuition.’

  That, he thought, people would be fighting over the remains. He said, ‘We all knew. And the situation is not so bad. It is only a temporary solution …’

  ‘Your friend—it was he who designed the new quarter?’

  ‘Oh, largely, yes. Scharoun. I was a part of it too—a small part.’

  ‘What will become of him, then?’

  ‘I imagine he’ll stay in the West for good now.’

  She said, ‘I want to go.’

  That stopped them walking.

  ‘What would you do?’

  ‘Work. Something.’

  ‘You don’t want to go.’

  ‘I do.’ She said, ‘I’m not yours to collect.’ Then, ‘To shelter in that enormous household of yours, like one of your children.’

  He said, ‘You won’t … it won’t work.’

  She said, ‘Look at this place! They have money there.’

  ‘That’s not why you want to go.’

  ‘… No.’

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you can still … I can still help you. If you need it.’

  She said, ‘Come.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Come with me. You could.’

  What was she saying? Did she say it? He didn’t want to imagine her fragile. The position of women in the West! If she stayed, she would be a worker, and strong.

  ‘And bring my family.’

  ‘… Of course, yes. Didn’t you say when I saw you last, that your son wanted to go?’

  ‘Children go and come back … I will tell you why I can’t go. It’s not because of my position here at the Academy. It’s not because it would be hard on my family—God knows we’ve all moved and started again enough times. I learned, while I was working with my students in Weimar, that you can only build in the right conditions. This is important. It’s important to me. You have to build the conditions even before you build. That, that’s what makes things so difficult—you also have to make buildings, for people to live in, as quickly as possible.’

  ‘In the West too.’

  ‘The conditions have to be right for building. Do you see what I’m saying? In the West? The conditions can’t be right there.’

  ‘What conditions?’ She gave the hint of a gesture at the surroundings. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  He also looked around. ‘You were right about the city. Somehow you knew that there would be a great fight over the rubble, over what to do. And that fight would leave us—architects—little room to breathe. All our fantasies of a new city!’

  She laughed.

  He said, ‘I think those fantasies are still good and important, actually.’

  ‘Yes. They were beautiful.’

  ‘They give us a reason to enter the fight! The city will only be built as part of that struggle.’ Then: ‘And the West pretends there is no fight. The fight is prematurely over in the West. The Americans will throw money around and magically buildings, whole neighbourhoods, will appear. They pretend there is no fight to be had, that everyone is in some passive agreement and there are only practical problems to solve. They pretend they can hold themselves separate from it all. We know different. We know that we have to work and struggle to raise our city up.’ Then: ‘I’m going on.’

  ‘Somewhat.’ But she had been listening. She said, ‘You might be right.’ Had she been imagining a life without CONDITIONS? She said, ‘You’re talking about class struggle. The struggle of the working class.’

  ‘Of course. The struggle of the workers against exploitation, the struggle of the workers to build their own city.’ He said, ‘It’s your struggle. It has to be. As a worker, and as a woman.’

  She nodded.

  He said, ‘There is only one way to make the city yours.’

  She nodded. Then she smiled. ‘So you’re not coming with me.’

  ‘No!’ Then he laughed.

  She said, ‘I do think you’re right.’

  ‘Stay and be part of it.’

  She was silent.

  ‘I’ll help you. In any way you need.’

  Das Volk im Widerspruch mit sich selbst. Then (I wrote) there might be two futures, futures that fought one another for the right to succeed the present, futures that were called MONEY and WORK respectively. MONEY blew as easily as banknotes, more easily. It would gleam in the form of its buildings, hastily erected and glorious, reaching up lightly, stacked cards, extruded metal, concrete as the shape of thought. WORK, however
, moved more slowly, with difficulty. Couldn’t it also raise its monuments? How could they be distinguished from the monuments to MONEY? H knew that impatience was dangerous. But it was only WORK that could claim any genuine future; MONEY, after all, was simply more of the same. MONEY’s own hurry meant that the future never quite left the present behind; it was thoughtless, even as it seemed like the embodiment of thought. H imagined, even as he knew that the imagination itself was dangerous, a city, a world, one that shouldered itself up; a city that stood slowly, like an animal, once wounded, but healing now, and getting to its knees, picking itself up, lifting its haunches, lifting its head, all under the force of its own living spirit, whatever was in it that meant it knew how to comport itself, then at last aiming its spine up and bringing itself to its feet, raising its head higher, squatting back, and pushing itself up until it was standing erect and bipedal. The city, given a chance and a direction to raise ITSELF! That was the image of WORK; though at the same time he had to admit that cities were one thing, and animals quite another.

  But there was the question: what would the New Berlin look like? H was impatient for the future to arrive; he was, after all, impatient for his chance to set that future in motion. Faster! The Party, after a visit to Moscow and other Soviet cities by senior members of the hierarchy, published its official architectural regulations in which, once again, architectural modernism was criticised. H read the documents with interest. The buildings of the international style pleased their designers but left the people cold; they might be erected anywhere in the world—equally foreign, and with the featureless, abstract quality of money. They were the built form of money—money congealed in glass, in mere roofs without walls, without solidity.

  The city must be designed with strong central elements, especially a central square accessible to the people, and representative monuments and buildings. The autonomous ‘cell’ neighbourhood divided the city from itself, the people from each other—a bad idea.

  Lernprozess. Berlin. Why should we care about this city? It contained and compressed the world. But didn’t much of the world carry on, oblivious to Berlin? Even if, for a while, it seemed as if ‘everyone’ was there; and even if it seemed like the centre of things (war)—no, this is not the reason to pay attention to the city. There is no centre, no ‘everyone’. We should care about it because of the efforts to rebuild, just as we should care about all such efforts.